Please understand, everyone who reads this...that I understand that there are other groups also being targeted with hatred and cruelty. I am not insensitive to this, nor am I blind or unfeeling to it. So please don’t take offense at what I am going to say in the Diary below. I care...I care very much….when any group is subject to injustice. But I do not FEEL like anyone REALLY CARES...when my family is subject to it (and yes, this is how I view the trans community...they are my FAMILY….as precious to me as any person’s flesh and blood is to them.)
You must firstly understand the source of this family feel I and many in the trans community have for our transgender community..our sisters and brothers, our non-binary siblings. You see...we are family of shared suffering. Of shared experience. We have, quite literally, been through the crucible together. And when you go through what we have...it changes you. It changes you in ways that are very difficult to even describe, let alone articulate to people who can NEVER really know what we experience.
We watch mothers plead for judicial clemency and mercy for their children who have grown up to commit rape and murder of the innocent...and then we watch our own families toss us in the trash...like yesterday’s newspaper...simply because we do not live up to their expectations of gender and/or sexuality that they built up for us in their own minds. We have not changed. We are who we always were...the only difference is now it is on the surface instead of bottled up inside.
”Transition” is not an adequate word for what we do...it is more a becoming. A becoming of who and what we always were, what we always knew, at our deepest levels...that we were. Many of us, myself included, fought and struggled against what we knew for years...fought and struggled to be what everyone else wanted and expected us to be.
It is not common knowledge among many who know me, but I once was even engaged to be married to a woman. A woman I did not love. At least, not in the way a husband ought to love his wife. She deserved far better than me. She deserved someone who could love her as she needed to be loved. But I — under pressure — continued to struggle to make something work that was never going to work, that could not work. It was not her fault. The fault was all mine.
It led to my second and final suicide attempt, in 1995. I had made one previous attempt as a teen, over largely the same gender dysphoria issues. Typical stupid teenage attempt, I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin. It just made me sick. Nevertheless it was an attempt as my INTENT was there. The second attempt was more serious. I slit a wrist. The only reason I did not succeed is because I cut so deep that I could not hold the razor in my right hand to do the left wrist...or I would have...and likely I would not have survived it. That is how real our pain is to us.
Over forty percent of transgender people in the 2015 US Trans Study, conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) reported having at least one suicide attempt in their lifetime. There were 28,000 Respondents, across all socioeconomic statuses, gender identities, sexual orientations, races, religions, and geographic regions — and the number represents about 2 percent of our estimated population in the United States. For full disclosure, I was one of the 28,000 Respondents.
So, back in 1995...I was engaged to this woman. I tried to make work what I knew never would. I was willing to hurt her...and myself...to be what everyone else expected of me. I saw my entire life laid out before me...like a highway with no exit ramps. Husband, father...male...I wanted none of it. An entire life I did not want, and no escape.
And if death was the only off-ramp available from that highway to hell...I was willing to take it. I was willing to kill “him” even though I would also kill HER in the process...and not caring a lot, either. It’s a dark place I thank whatever Gods/Goddesses there may be that so few of us will ever know. But it changes you. It’s our crucible.
Fortunately, my plans failed (obviously) and I survived the attempt. My then-fiancee gave me my ring back, right there, on the spot. She said to me on that day “Angela,” (yes,she called me Angela. She knew about this part of me by then) “we both know why you did this. We both know what you really need, and it isn’t me. I am giving this back to you BECAUSE I love you.” Possibly the first person who ever DID love me. I mean really loved ME. Not the facade, but ME. I can tell you at the time, I did not love me.
Now, Kim turned out to be an angel. An angel I needed...but did not know. She stood with me over the next two years as I began my own transition into the world that should always have been mine. My own becoming. Kim had been okay, when we were dating...with Angela coming out for a little tap dance. But she came to know...and accept...even sooner than me...that a little tap-dance was not enough. I needed to BE Angela. I was not attracted to women, sexually. I did not, in any way, feel like a man. But Kim was willing to stand with me and help me...as I took those first brave steps into what for me was a new world...but one which should have been mine all along. The first date I had with a man, as a woman...Kim set me up on.
So, since January of 1995, I had been living as Angela...though not yet full-time, as I still worked in my male persona. It was in January 1997, that I became Angela full-time. And was promptly fired from my job for it. This employer went so far as to fight my unemployment, making false allegations that I had been terminated for willful misconduct. I was found innocent and awarded my unemployment, with back benefits. It was an eight-week process during which I nearly starved.
I decided there would be no more transition on a job...that I was going in as Angela in the first place...and they would hire me or not. And found that my former employer was giving false and misleading negative references to potential future employers...including that I had been terminated for willful misconduct. “Oh, and you know that isn’t REALLY a woman...right??” — this former employer actually said that to potential future employers...outing me.
I ended up having to move. I left Pennsylvania. I ended up in Louisville, KY. There, I was a caretaker for a friend’s elderly mom. Quite literally, I was Driving Miss Daisy. To this day, when I see that movie, I think of Janet...who became very much a second mom to me (at the time my own flesh and blood mom had rejected me) By the way, Janet died in 2005.
I went to the University of Louisville Endocrinology Department...to find a doctor to continue the hormone therapy I had already started...and was sexually assaulted in the doctor’s office and refused treatment based on the doctor’s “religious convictions” — in this case, I assume Islam, as he was Arabic. You have to love it. The man’s “religious convictions” prevented him from treating me...BUT NOT SEXUALLY ASSAULTING ME!!
I decided to go to school. I attended Sullivan College, now Sullivan University. I double-majored in Paralegal and Political Science, and carried a 4.0 GPA. I intended to go on to law school. I wanted to do good things for my community, my family. Instead, I dropped out shortly after the second semester began. Matt Shepard got killed in Wyoming. And five days after that, Dr. John Padgett, then Dean of Students (yes I still remember his name to this day) — stole my dreams, my life and my future. Today, Dr. Padgett works with an education company of some kind in, I think, Alabama. On that day, he told me that I could only use male restrooms on campus.
I was left with to choose between continuing my education...and my own personal safety. I chose my safety. if only I’d known then...what I know now. You see, even back then, though I was pre-op, I was legally identified as a woman, by dint of the State of Kentucky (and before them Pennsylvania) issuing me a driver’s license with the female gender marker. But I did not feel like I wanted to put my life and safety at risk, and become the next Matt Shepard. So I dropped out on the spot. I ended up having to also pay for an entire semester of instruction I never received. Yes...this is a part of Sullivan University’s PROUD HISTORY. A university that today espouses much different values while conveniently burying their own dirty and disgusting history.
Later, I met my transmom, Terrianne. She was from Jacksonville, FL. She taught me most of what I know today about lobbying, political activism, and advocacy for the trans community. If only I’d known her sooner. Later, in 2001, Terrianne was taken from me. Murdered in her own front lawn, a single gunshot. To this day, her killer has never been apprehended, and Terrianne was on 2002’s TDOR list. She lives now only in the Jacksonville PD’s Cold Case Unit...misgendered...and in the hearts of those, like me, who loved her.
By now, I was living in Texas. Austin. And Dubya was our President. And 9/11 had happened...and the world began changing….changing in ways unfavorable to many. During the Dubya Administration, we were never directly targeted with animus, but they sure as hell were not about to help us, either. And the War On Terror began. Remember the Terror Color Codes? I do. They kept telling us to go about our lives...there was nothing to see, nothing to worry about...and then kept ratcheting up the fear...to levels that were unbearable.
I went to Thailand in 2002, for my surgery. I used proceeds from a lawsuit against that original employer who’d fired me in 1997...to finance my surgery. Poetic justice if ever there was any! And I deliberately scheduled my flights so that they would be as unattractive to terrorists as a cockroach on a wedding cake. Midweek, red-eye flights...where people would not be occupying buildings they could fly planes into. I remain, to this day, that terrified of flying. I used to think nothing of it. These days, if you want to get me on a plane, any plane...you had better trank me.
I ended up back in Pennsylvania in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina. Remember it? Heck of a job, Brownie!! I do. I lived it. Oh, not the direct storm, but the aftermath. I was unemployed and trans...and you may already know that when times get bad...we are the first thrown on the scrap heap. We are also the last to be rescued from that same scrap heap when times get good. Don’t take my word for it, look up the unemployed/underemployed statistics compiled by NCTE. Our numbers are four times higher than our cisgender counterparts.
Refugees from Katrina began pouring into Texas...and immediately got hiring preference. There was nothing left for me in Texas. By then, Mom had come to accept me, and she told me to come home to Pennsylvania. I kept resisting, but economic circumstances forced it...so, tail between my legs, at the age of 34, I returned home...losing my independence, my self-esteem, my self-dignity, my self-worth, and any confidence i might have had left. This was the beginning of my disability, which lasted seven years.
During the first two years, i could barely even get out of bed. For the first time in my life, I needed psych meds for a time to stabilize me, and keep myself from digging myself deeper...and to give me a chance to dig out. I managed to. I got a job, part-time, with an answering service...because a friend of a friend owned the company...and the owner was married to a trans person. That was the only way I got that job. And I worked the overnight shift. Alone in a bunker. Just like I liked it. No poisonous co-workers to stab me in the back and accuse me of things I had never done attempting to get me fired.
I finished my schooling in Medical Transcription around the same time the company was sold...and I ended up in Fayetteville, NC for three weeks, training my job replacements. That was where I came to first love North Carolina. Everyone was so nice. It was known to be the happening and progressive place to be in the South.
I began vacationing in NC. Meanwhile, I launched a Medical Transcription company that was a monumental failure...I did not have the capital I needed to do it properly. That company was kept “dormant” and in 2013, I revived it, changed it’s focus to billing and coding, and got a client...a client who had been a client of the company I briefly worked for in 2012, before the owner was arrested and sent to State Prison for eight years.
That doctor has been my client to this day, and still is. Knows I am trans and does not care. But he is my only client and it isn’t really generating enough cash flow to make my ends meet.
We lost the house in Pennsylvania to the housing bubble and bust. And decided to move to North Carolina. We were not going to get to stay where we were, anyway, and both of us had come to love North Carolina. By this time, September, 2014, we were well into Obama’s second term. Had I known what was to come in North Carolina...I would have chosen a different place. I was still disabled...but making “too much money” to qualify for disability, so relinquished my disability payments.
To this day I remain disabled. But now that it’s been more than five years...getting back on it, if I needed to...would be as long and as hard a process as getting on it in the first place was. That took me two years back then.
So...2016. March 23, 2016. HB-2 passed. I HAD come to North Carolina...with the intent and purpose of living out my life in peace, finally the woman I had always been...in a place where nobody knew my past. See how well that plan worked out!! I had, at the time, no connection to the local LGBT community and did not want any. That changed March 23. I could not stay silent while college students who were trans today...were forced to make the same horrible choice I had had to make way back in 1998. I gave up everything I had hoped to build for myself in North Carolina...to fight legislation that did not even apply to me...as I was post-op and with a birth certificate identifying me as Female...thank the Goddesses I was born in a civilized state like Illinois!
November. We believed Hillary had it in the bag. Obama had become the first sitting President to publicly support us...and to use the word “transgender” in a State Of The Union Address, no less!! Gavin Grimm was set to go to the Supreme Court. Finally, we were going to have our legal status decided, once and for all...and likely in our favor.
And we got Trump. And Gorsuch. And my world fell apart. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory we believed was ours. I cannot describe for you how badly it hurt. And then...to have some Democrats and neoliberals blame US trans for losing it for Hillary!! It was a very painful time. It’s proven to be every bit as bad as I thought it would be and worse.
The rescinding of Obama-era bathroom guidance came first. Then Gavin Grimm did not go to the Supreme Court. Then we had the trans military ban...which Trump is still trying to implement, and keeps being slapped down. But still trying. Cait Jenner prancing around as if her privileged ass was any kind of a representative for our community, when she has not paid her dues, and is insulated from 99 percent of the BS we face every day.
Then we had Trump declaring we trans would NOT be counted in the 2020 Census, as Obama had planned. Another ten years of not counting. Another ten years of not mattering. Why does it harm anyone to have a simple question on their Census form...”do you identify as transgender?”
Then we had the CDC Seven Words thing...which is actually far more insidious than any of you know...because now the government cannot even report on violence committed against us...nor on the medical complications we endure as a result of bathroom avoidance. And you know if there is no Government report n it...then it did not happen!! EXCEPT THAT IT DID HAPPEN...AND CONTINUES TO HAPPEN!!
Meanwhile, my community hears crickets. We get a day or two of politically correct outrage and then we are forgotten...and the injustice stands. And we watch while other groups...like BLM, the Dreamers, the Muslims...and now immigrants...get all the love, attention, support and help!! And we get nothing. Nothing but crickets. It hurts. It hurts terribly. I do not want to take from those other groups...but is it SO HORRIBLE...to want OUR LIVES to matter AS MUCH as theirs?
Trans murders are up every year. Trans suicides are up. Trans unemployment is up, and trans underemployment is rampant. Meanwhile, nobody appears to care. Nothing substantive is being done to help us...not by the people who claim to be our allies.
Couple that with the special treachery with which we have been dealt with in North Carolina. I can’t think of a single transperson here that does not believe Roy Cooper stabbed us in the back. Yeah...HB-2 was repealed...but not REALLY. Those outside of NC believe it was...and nobody is paying attention anymore. Again. Meanwhile, the injustice continues. And my Party does not stand up for us. Our allies do not stand up for us.
In December, 2016...a Special Session was held in the NCGA with the purpose of repealing HB-2. It failed. Part of the deal was Charlotte was to repeal it’s Ordinance first. Mayor Roberts complied. Not good enough, said the NCGA, and so Mayor Roberts rolled the Ordinance all the way back to what it was when first passed in 1968 (most are not aware that the Charlotte Ordinance was merely an Amendment to an existing Ordinance)
We were offered a “repeal” but with a catch. A “moratorium” on municipalities and local government units that they could not pass a Charlotte-style Ordinance...for six months. We turned it down. It was not what we had been promised by the NC-GOP. We did everything they requested and more, and they reneged on the deal. They would not give us a clean repeal.
March, 2017. Governor Cooper. Another Special Session. This time, we had them up against the ropes. NCAA was set to make determination about championship game venues through 2022. AND COOPER BLINKED. HE CAVED IN. UTTERLY, COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY.
That was how we got SB-142, which effectively repealed HB-2 — except that it didn’t...not really. Here is why:
The law states now that the NCGA is the only body that can ever legislate or regulate bathrooms. Meaning, if I am a school superintendent, say, who wants to be more accommodating to trans students...even setting them up a separate facility, I can’t do that on my own hook. I have to go through the NCGA. The NCGA that has proved nothing but hostile to us.
And the “moratorium??” This bill has a moratorium of FORTY FOUR MONTHS!! Nearly four years...versus six months under McCrory. And it is lost on NONE of us, that the December 2020 expiration conveniently falls one month after the next Gubernatorial election. Roy Cooper looked at us in the trans community and said, “sorry, guys. Basketball in NC...and my own re-election...is more important to me than your civil rights..so you guys can go to hell. Sit on ice for four years.”
And on the day it passed, NC Senator Dan Blue Jr, Senate Minority Leader and now my legal NC Senator...spent SEVEN MINUTES pontificating from the floor about how it was a “reset button” that would enable an open and honest conversation about the rights of transgender North Carolinians. It has been over a year...ad Senator Blue has not given us SEVEN SECONDS since that day. Why would he?? No photo op!!
This is how it FEELS to us.
And it gets even worse. Nothing in the repeal says they cannot later re-institute HB-2...and they tried, five days after SB-142 was passed. HB-562 never made it out of committee. BUT THEY TRIED. Expect them to try again.
And nothing in SB-142 says they can’t come back, in separate legislation, and extend the December 2020 deadline for the moratorium...literally into perpetuity, forever denying us our rights in North Carolina. And they will do it. Bet on it. Meanwhile, I see no outrage. I see no action. I see things getting WORSE not better, for trans in North Carolina. And all our so-called allies...not a peep. Instead we get “I’m sorry...” we get wringing hands declaring...:well, the Supermajority...let’s get these people out then we can help you!” Yeah...that is what we were told with Cooper. Look how well it worked LAST TIME we trusted our allies!
And now we have a sitting President...referring to entire groups of humans as “animals.” Keeping them in virtual cages. Subjecting them to emotional/mental/psychological trauma that none should ever have to endure. And rightly...there is a huge outcry. A SUSTAINED OUTCRY. And all I want to know is where is the SUSTAINED OUTCRY...on our behalf? If all lives really matter...then why does it feel to me like everyone ELSE’s life...MATTERS MORE?? Is it so horrible to want my life...the lives of MY family...to matter AS MUCH?? But it does not.
And this latest is what leads to the greatest fear that I now see in the trans community...and which, to a degree, I share. That they will come for us. WE will be called “animals” and “freaks.” And WE will be taken. But nobody will stand in their way, or notice or care. Why would they? They haven’t appeared to REALLY CARE while several other atrocities have been committed against us!!
And we are in upside down world. We no longer know who to trust or what to believe. Up is down, black is white, right is left. Many in my community believe that the way we will be taken...is to be promised “safe haven” somewhere...only when we get there...what we will find is an oven door or a shower. And nobody will stand in their way. Nobody will care while we are exterminated.
This is how America FEELS right now...to the transgender community. And America should never feel that way to anyone. But it is how it feels.
I close this off with a graphic. This is a series of things our allies can do. They are not all 100 percent “safe.” We need you all to stick your necks out for us a little bit here. And the more people do these things...the safer it will be...and the less safe hate and discrimination will be.
These are things that can be done, regardless of who is in power. And they will make a REAL SUBSTANTIVE DIFFERENCE in our lives. Every last one of our allies can at least do some of the things on this list.
WE feel like you all only care about us when you want our vote. And once you have it, you do not care anymore.
Please prove me wrong. And thanks for listening.
America should never feel...to any citizen...let alone to any person...the way it feels to us right now.